Geek Syndicate
game play to be enough to jar me
out of the moment. The humour in
the premise and the story itself also
works well and wouldn’t be out of
place in an animated feature.
There’s one or two scenes in the
game that are genuinely jaw-dropping. The first is near the beginning
of the game. Max has been platforming his way along a cliffside. At the
end of the section, he approaches a
stretch of desert. The game’s camera
zooms seamlessly out to give a much
wider perspective. At this point, Max
is a tiny blip on the screen as he runs
along (still controlled by the player)
to an oasis. My biggest gripe with
the game is that moments like this
weren’t repeated nearly enough.
The game is challenging, but not
prohibitively so. Max has no health
or limited number of lives. Anything
he encounters that wounds him will
kill him. This could be a long drop, a
monster, lava, electricity from the
(really annoying) Lantern Bugs or
one of a number of other dangers.
If you should get the boy killed,
you re-start at the last checkpoint.
What’s nice is that the game creates
a checkpoint at the beginning of
every puzzle or area. Because of this,
there’s no real sense of frustration
at having to repeat several puzzles
to get back to the point that keeps
killing you.
That said, there were a couple of
moments in the game that had me
stumped for a while. By far the most
frustrating was the final encounter
but I eventually got the hang of it.
Overall, I would say that Max: The
Curse of Brotherhood is well worth a
download. It’s not very expensive
in the XBOX Game Store (£11.99) and
will give, I think, between eight and
twelve hours of game play. More if
you’re an achievement hunter. It’s
fun, looks beautiful and the controls
work nicely. Whether you’re a fan of
platform games or have been away
from the genre for a while, I’d recommend giving it a blast.
Antony McGarry-Thickitt
Rating
GGGGG
67